Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina
Indonesia
Anthropogenic Impact, Climatic Changes, Extraction, Industrialisation, Sea Level Rise
Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina

Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina, The Call of Fragility, 2022, Anak Krakatoa Volcano, Indonesia. Photography by Irwan Ahmett. Courtesy the artists.

Artist

Region
Indonesia

Category
Risk, Resilience and Resistance

Topics
Anthropogenic Impact, Climatic Changes, Extraction, Industrialisation, Sea Level Rise

Methodology
Archival Documentation, Film, Video

Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina

Projects

Ziarah Utara (Pilgrimage to the North)

2018 – ongoing

No turtles lay eggs on a sinking Talak Island in Thousand Islands Archipelago anymore.

Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina, Ziarah Utara, 2023, Pulau Talak, Jakarta, Indonesia. Photography by Irwan Ahmett. Courtesy the artists.

A pig-tailed macaque on the chain looks irritated amidst the high tide being soothed by a boy who was deprived of the things he deserves at his age.

Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina, Ziarah Utara, 2023, Muara Angke, North Jakarta, Indonesia. Photography by Irwan Ahmett. Courtesy the artists.

A rotten security post container on a decaying reclaimed land.

Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina, Ziarah Utara, 2023, Jakarta Bay,Indonesia. Photography by Irwan Ahmett. Courtesy the artists.

One of the ugliest beaches made from metropolitan residents' sins caused the silting of the rivers in Jakarta.

Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina, Ziarah Utara, 2023, Panenan Beach, North Jakarta, Indonesia. Photography by Irwan Ahmett. Courtesy the artists.

The pilgrims who perhaps seeking for their human values by looking for suffering.

Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina, Ziarah Utara, 2023, Panenan Beach, North Jakarta, Indonesia. Photography by Irwan Ahmett. Courtesy the artists.

Ziarah Utara Map 2023

Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina, Ziarah Utara, 2023, Jakarta, Indonesia. Digital capture. Courtesy the artists.

Over the last four years, Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina have conducted Ziarah Utara (Pilgrimage to the North) every year in their city, Jakarta. Initiated together with the Australian artists and geographers Jorgen Doyle and Hannah Ekin, this annual walk aims to build trust and intimacy with people they encounter along the way, from informal settlements to gated communities, by way of visual documentation, trespassing, and listening to fading stories.

On a physical and sensorial level, Ahmett and Salina expose their bodies to nature afflicted by industrial contamination. Population growth and land conversions, coupled with massive human activity along the coastline, have resulted in ecological collapse, land subsidence, and rising sea levels in Jakarta, which now faces an uncertain future. This accumulation of sedimented problems becomes Ahmett and Salina’s “ground zero” to elaborate another side of the first capital in modern world history that plans to escape due to the climate crisis.

Check out the full site here


Harvest from Atlantis

2019

Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina, Harvest from Atlantis, 2019, Dadap, Indonesia. Captured from the video. Courtesy the artists.

Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina, Harvest from Atlantis, 2019, Dadap, Indonesia. Photography by Yopie Nugraha. Courtesy the artists.

Harvest from Atlantis follows the 7-month journey of mussel cultivation in Jakarta Bay. Amongst the littered and barren village, Tita Salina and Irwan Ahmett stage a ritualistic ceremony by parading and planting a monumental bamboo structure used for harvesting mussels out into the expanse of the sea. Over the months, petal offerings bless and foster the mussel tree's cultivation before finally yielding an abundant harvest and brought home. As household waste and heavy metals from industrial plants continue to contaminate the waters, groundwater extraction pose a huge problem as land subsidence and rising sea levels cause Jakarta to sink at an alarming pace. Amid ecological ruin under unchecked capitalism, these small coastal communities hold onto the sea as a site for collective living and striving as they have for generations. One day, even when submerged, the mussel trees of Jakarta-Atlantis will serve as monuments of resistance and regrowth from below ground.


Through the Lens of Eurasian Plate fragility in Java Island

2022

Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina, Through the Lens of Eurasian Plate Fragility in Java Island, 2022, Semarang, Indonesia. Photography by Irwan Ahmett. Courtesy the artists.

Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina, Through the Lens of Eurasian Plate Fragility in Java Island, 2022, Cilincing, Jakarta, Indonesia. Photography by Irwan Ahmett. Courtesy the artists.

Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina, Through the Lens of Eurasian Plate Fragility in Java Island, 2022, North Jakarta, Indonesia. Photography by Irwan Ahmett. Courtesy the artists.


The Call of Fragility

2022

Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina, The Call of Fragility, 2022, Anak Krakatoa Volcano, Indonesia. Photography by Irwan Ahmett. Courtesy the artists.

Ahmett and Salina research on geopolitical turmoil in the Ring of Fire (or ‘Pacific Rim’), a region prone to natural disasters aggravated by other current climate crises. For the Biennale, the artist duo investigated the dynamics of climatic change over an extremely long timescale to a perspective from which it can be seen as occurring often. The project conjectured caves as archives of early human social life – and as indices of our species’ fluctuating fragility. Their contribution took two forms: a mini-symposium featuring experts in geology, primatology, prehistory and religions; and The Call of Fragility (2022). This was a multimedia installation merging documentation of a subterranean performance lecture with vocal sounds of the audience recorded in an interactive audio chamber.


Biography

Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina

Tita Salina (b. 1973, Indonesia) and Irwan Ahmett (b. 1975, Indonesia) are an artist duo from Jakarta. Their public art installation and performances intervene with communities to narrate civic, political, and ecological power struggles. Since 2014, Salina and Ahmett have been working on projects around the Pacific Rim Ring of Fire – regions prone to natural disasters with persistent colonial violence, political repression, urban development issues, and profiteering of ecological resources. The artist duo conduct research, field study, and residencies to investigate injustice related to micro and macroenvironments.

Ahmett and Salina have exhibited their works in international institutions and biennales such as Bangkok Art Biennale, Bangkok, Thailand (2020), the 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (2021), NTU Centre of Contemporary Art Singapore (2019), Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland (2017), Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark (2016), Asian Art Biennale, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan (2015), Biennale Jogja, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2015) and the Singapore Biennale (2013).

Tita Salina & Irwan Ahmett. Courtesy of the artists.

Videos

A Tale of Climate Crisis in the Northern Coast of Jakarta, TedXJakarta, Irwan Ahmett, 2022

Since 2018, Irwan Ahmett and his partner, Tita Salina, carried out expeditions along the northern coast of Jakarta on foot. Through their journey, they found many illusions that is being faced by Jakarta's coastal citizens. They realized that these illusions emerged as a result of the climate crisis that occurred and its impact was felt most by the people living within Jarta's coastlines. They expressed their concern regarding the situations through art performances in the hope that more people would become aware of this situation.

1001st Island - The Most Sustainable Island in Archipelago, Tita Salina, 2016

Mega project giant sea wall is a solution offered by the government to prevent floods and open new housing areas in Jakarta. It will integrate with seventeen artificial islands from the reclamation. Many people doubt this gigantic project could solve the urban problems. Yet the Jakartans still struggle with the waste management and polluted water. Together with local fishermen in Muara Angke--soon to get the impact of the project-- Tita collected marine debris and plastic trash in the area then turned them into an artificial island. With the help of a fishermen boat, the island is pulled and placed between the reclamation islands and Thousand Islands. Tita tries to connect the reclamation issue and land used with the waste plagues the sea and the future of traditional fishermen.

Conferences

Climate Futures #1: Cultures, Climate Crisis and Disappearing Ecologies, Jakarta, Activation, 2 December 2022

"Over the last four years, Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina have conducted Ziarah Utara (Pilgrimage to the North) every year in their city, Jakarta. Initiated together with the Australian artists and geographers Jorgen Doyle and Hanna Ekin, this annual walk aims to build trust and intimacy with people they encounter along the way, from informal settlements to gated communities, by way of visual documentation, trespassing, and listening to fading stories.
During the conference, Ahmett and Salina invite participants to be in dialogue with the fishing community of Kampung Dadap, Tangerang, to learn about its struggle through cultural activities that aim to defend its dignity. While looking at Jakarta from the sea, participants are called to search for pearls of hope while critically questioning if the megalopois is just an empty shell burdened with a narrative battle that exacerbates polarisation?" [1]

[1] Climate Futures #1 Cultures, Climate Crisis and Disappearing Ecologies, Programme Brochure, NTU CCA - Konnect ASEAN

Further Reading

Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina, “Cranial Relic: Eleven Artifacts on Extinction and Survival since 1,5M Years,” Terremoto, November 30, 2020, https://terremoto.mx/en/revista/reliquia-craneal/.

John Zarobell, “Artistic Research and Everyday Life in the Asian Megacity,” Academia Letters, February 1, 2021, https://doi.org/10.20935/al138.

Pietro Consolandi, “With the Wild: Artmaking as Collaboration with Wild Landscapes and Their Inhabitants. 3. Being Pilgrims: Measuring the Landscape with Bodies, Steps and Words.,” in Building Common Ground: Ecological Art Practices and Human-Nonhuman Knowledges, ed. Emiliano Guaraldo (Edizioni Ca’Foscari, 2023).

Soh Kay Min, “Telemetric Feeling in Tita Salina and Irwan Ahmett’s the Ring of Fire (2014–Present),” Southeast of Now 8, no. 1 (March 1, 2024): 67–89, https://doi.org/10.56159/sen.2024.a924616.

Tita Salina and Irwan Ahmett, “Ring of Fire,” in Climate. Habitats. Environments. (NTU CCA Singapore and MIT Press, 2022).

張紋瑄, “A Vagabond Cosmopolitan’s Note on Violence: Irwan & Tita’s ‘Fire Rim’ Project ,” ed. Yi-Ting Chung and Rikey Tenn, No Man’s Land, no. 46: The Piracy, the Radiowave, the Bubble (September 22, 2020).

Selected Exhibitions


Selected Solo Exhibitions

2019 The Ring of Fire, NTU Centre for Contemporary Arts, Singapore
2016 The Flame of the Pacific, St Paul St Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand

Selected Group Exhibitions 

2024 'B.A.T.A.M (Bila Anda Tiba Anda Menyesal/When You Arrive You'll Regret)'. Contributor to Marco Scotini’s, Disobedience Archive, 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy
2024 'Tanah Tumpah Darah', Island A of A SEA OF ISLANDS: Stardust Memories of Moving Homes, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei
2023 'Harvest from Atlantis' (2019) and 'Bersemi Sekebun' (2023), Zomia in the Cloud, Chiang Rai Thailand Biennale 2023, Chiang Rai, Thailand
2022 The Call of Fragility, 17th Istanbul Biennale, Turkey
2021 Garuda Berkepala Naga (The Dragon-headed Garuda), The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia
2020 1001st Island: The most sustainable island in archipelago, Bangkok Art Biennale, Bangkok, Thailand
2018-2020 Breathing of Maps, Yamuguchi Center for Arts and Media, Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre
2016 Jakarta Stories, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark
2015 Salting the Sea, Asian Art Biennale, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan